I previously wrote about a vision that I had while meditating by the river, for a post in a Facebook group I belong to. The version I shared was brief and censored to be more comfortable for the members of the group. I want to share a more in-depth version of the story, but I’ll include what I said originally for reference:
The actual experience was heavier than I led on and was a bit shocking to me. Still a good experience, but consider this a trigger warning for death and maybe slightly gorey themes.
I was intending to cross the bridge to buy a cookie at the store as well as hitting a few Pokemon Go stops. When my feet touched the bridge, I could sense a lot of energy, which told me that the river had a message for me if I would only stop to listen. At the middle of the bridge I begin my ritual of convening with nature: deep breaths, feeling a loving universal energy fall over me, through me, out the bottoms of my feet and deep into the river below. Immediately I feel a sense of expansion, suddenly aware of the vastness of the river I’m standing over and my tiny presence in the midst of it all. I send Reiki symbols, I feel them filling up the space below me, and washing over myself as well.
On this night, the bridge was casting a shadow on the frozen river within the orange glow of the streetlights. I kept my eyes open while meditating and as I concentrated on the shadow of the structure, I became aware of my own shadow in the scene below. In my mind, I saw the shadow of a black bird flying out from the bridge’s shadow, flying in a magnificent arc across the snow and down to meet the shadow of the bridge again, where it fell onto its back and died. As it lay there, it began to rot and worms filled its guts. Another bird came along, which I recognized as both a new bird and a rebirth of the dead bird. This “new” bird flew down to the dead bird, lowering its head in a moment of mourning for its buddy, before reaching in and grabbing the worms that it would use to feed its family and itself. After picking up the worms, the bird flew away and I returned to reality, the vision was over.
“Woah, what just happened?” I thought to myself. I’d been shedding some tears, which stung in the cold air. My body felt light and I took some time to process.
In one sense I was both the old bird and the new bird. So while this vision did represent mourning the loss of a loved one, it also represented changes within oneself which can cause us to grieve for our old selves and old life circumstances. This can happen with good changes as well as unfavourable ones, and it’s beneficial for us to let ourselves feel this grief even if it might not make logical sense to us in the moment.
It will inevitably feel pretty rotten. But if we push that grief so far away as to repress it, or if we dwell on it to the point of letting it consume us, this is akin to feeding more and more garbage to those worms and leaving them there to fester in the rotting soil. By the action of diving in and picking up those worms — or in other words, sitting with the uncomfortable feelings of grief, finding the good that comes out of the bad, the happy memories, productive life lessons and acts of self care, creating art or even writing blog posts about your experiences — this is how we use the pain and the “worms” to nourish ourselves and enrich our lives as we move forward.
When I was a kid, one of the things I remember my dad saying repeatedly was “out of something bad, always comes something good.” I contemplated this saying a lot but I never fully understood, it until my mom died. That was a very tough time, but our family pulled together. My relationship with my dad became closer than before, and nowadays I can’t even imagine a time when we weren’t this close. I’m not saying this wouldn’t have happened if my mom were still around, but it accelerated the process for that 21 year old spitfire punk and her pops. For that, I am grateful, even though the circumstances were tragic.
That night I went home and dusted my mom’s collection of elephant figurines that we keep to remind us of her. I’ve been working through some feelings of anger and resentment around my relationship with my mom, which can be scary but is necessary in order to return to the love that was inherent between us. I feel closer to her than I have in 12 years, the length of time that she has been gone.
Pick up those worms!
